Desperate, Circe asks whether pharmaka would help. She staunchly tells her that it is impossible. Distraught that she cannot marry someone as lowly as a mortal fisherman, she asks her grandmother Tethys whether there is some way to change Glaucos into a god. The man’s name is Glaucos.Ĭirce falls in love with Glaucos. She calls out to him and, after a few fearful moments, he relaxes, and they become friends. She can tell from his scars that he is a mortal. One day, she sees a man in a fishing boat. Shortly after, Perses also leaves.Ĭirce is painfully lonely after Aeëtes’s departure. Circe pleads with him to bring her along, but he refuses and leaves for his kingdom. Aeëtes informs her that Helios has given him a kingdom. On the day of the wedding, Circe sees mortals for the first time and is struck by how fearful they look.

Helios gives Pasiphaë away in marriage to Minos, the king of Crete. Aeëtes tells her that he knows of some powerful herbs called pharmaka, which grow from the blood of gods. Circe decides to care for him, and the two become close. When he doesn’t earn a prophecy from Helios, she rejects him, too. After the whipping, Circe and Prometheus have a brief conversation during which he tells her that “Not every god need be the same.” Afterwards, Circe goes to her room and cuts her hand, feeling that she has autonomy for the first time. To begin his torment, Prometheus is whipped by a Fury before an eager crowd of other immortals. Rumors circulate that Prometheus is going to be punished by Zeus because he had given humans fire against Zeus’s orders.

Both are cruel, so Circe avoids them and prefers to sit at Helios’s feet. Perse and Helios have another daughter, Pasiphaë, and a son, Perses. When Circe was born, Perse was disappointed that her child was a girl.

She describes how her mother Perse, a beautiful nymph, enticed Circe’s father Helios, a Titan, to marry her. Circe begins telling her origin story by stating that “the name for what did not exist” when she was born.

Circe by madeline miller